


The Something Else

by Adaris



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Elias gets high af and looks for twinkies, Elias gets snacky, Gen, Gertrude? Not Impressed, can you imagine a salad made entirely of pot, euphemisms for the beholding, he also creates a psychic link with some pigeons, pot brownies, references to the Devil’s Lettuce, she uses her beholding powers on him but is Evil Elias really the same as Baby Elias, young stoner Elias can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 22:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18082544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaris/pseuds/Adaris
Summary: Inspired bythis post: "since elias was apparently a pothead before working at the institute, i’d like everyone to imagine him sitting in his office stoned out of his fucking mind, using his Magic Beholding Powers to check if the nearest convenience store has twinkies or not".Elias has a craving for a certain culinary confection. The Beholding watches.





	The Something Else

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever just... write something for no reason

Elias grabbed someone walking past him by the shoulder and told them, “I’m so proud of you going to grad school! Greek history is so fun!" He wandered away afterwards but immediately snagged someone else to say, "You washed your car this morning, it looks great!"

A lot of people were staring at him. But that was fine. When it was a lot of people, the Something Else that always watched him receded into the background. And when it was a lot of people and he was higher than something very, very tall, he could barely even notice the Something Else, so he said to a random man, "Hey, I love your haircut, it’s very flattering!" and kept walking.

He did stop to stare at an empty packet of crisps on the ground, thinking about the way they tasted in someone else’s mouth for a solid fifteen minutes, crunchy, artificial barbecue flavor, salt, mmm, before he remembered his mission.

Twinkies.

He closed his eyes and pulled back away from the street, so he could see the closest Twinkies from a vaguely omniscient perspective. Tesco! Elias was only held up for thirty minutes when he accidentally Beheld the entire schedule of a bus going to Birmingham, saw the bus go twisting and turning down endless spiraling roads for hours on end, the passengers wriggling uncomfortably in their seats, watching the scenery pass and the sun grow ever lower in the sky, but managed to make it onto the tube without dropping his Oyster card down a drain. For the third time.

Once he managed to pick a car to sit in, he read a book about vampires from the perspective of a forty-five-year-old woman, but he kept getting distracted by the sound of her turning the page. His vision was consumed by the fine grains of the paper, not white but a pale cream, the dots of each printed letter looming like nightfall in the periphery.

Then… _Twinkies_.

Elias drifted through the streets and had to keep jumping over the cracks in the pavement because the eyes were staring up at him from the depths. So many eyes.

A stoplight five streets down turned red, and he crossed the street right into oncoming traffic. Because his street’s stoplight was still green, it had just seemed unimportant. Elias stared at his reflection in the shiny windshield of the car that almost hit him and gently placed his hand on the sparkling blue paint.

He was high as fuck.

Nice.

He pulled a brownie out of his pocket, where it had probably left a lot of crumbs and grease and greasy crumbs, and ate it. Then he remembered to move out of the road, several cars honking in displeasure. Finally, he wandered into Tesco, where fresh produce and microwave rice stretched out in front of him.

Twinkies?

He Beheld the contents of the store and walked with unerring purpose to the American goods section, grabbing four boxes before returning to the self-checkout counter.

That amused him for at least twenty minutes. He spent a long time figuring out how to scan the boxes of Twinkies, mostly because it turned out he'd been scanning them with a handful of leaves he'd picked up from somewhere. Someone had to come over and help him check out, so really, he hadn't actually been in the self-checkout counter. He'd been in the normal checkout place.

Satisfied, still holding the boxes in his arms, Elias made it all the way to a nice tree in a park, sat down, and started snacking.

Three pigeons wandered over to peck at the crumbs, and he Beheld their deepest, innermost thoughts. Their pigeon dreams. He thought he could feel the presence of their pigeon god, a vast, eternal, unknowable creature made of feathers and talons and soggy chips covered in ketchup.

Then the Something Else loomed back at the edge of his mind, cutting through his thoughts of ice cream cone crumbs, and he offered it a Twinkie.

"Elias," a familiar voice snapped. She was the one who had brought the gaze of the Something Else, which stared at her with its usual intensity—a mind-numbing, crushing force like standing under a waterfall of elephants.

He offered Gertrude a Twinkie.

"Get up," she ordered, ignoring the treat.

Elias jumped to his feet without really thinking about it. The pigeons fluttered away, but by now, he'd spent so much time absorbing their thoughts that he could probably find them again through some sort of psychic link. He and the pigeons were one. And now he was craving chips. Maybe a tourist would give him some. No, wait, that was pigeon talk. Gertrude would give him some.

"It's two in the morning, and you've clearly been sitting under this tree for hours. Did you… did you eat all of those Twinkies? _You did_."

Elias looked down at his lap, which was covered in wrappers. "Maybe," he mumbled, trying to pick them up to hide them somewhere and failing spectacularly.

"And you’re still high? Incredible," Gertrude muttered. She grabbed all of the wrappers and shoved them into one of the empty boxes with surprising dexterity. 

"Pot brownies." He pulled one out of his pocket to demonstrate. "The high lasts a lot longer than when you smoke it, obviously. And I've eaten like five of these today, so… I should be high for days." He went to take a bite of the brownie, and Gertrude smacked it out of his hand. Elias gasped in shock and promptly burst into tears.

"Okay, okay," she sighed, pulling Elias to his feet and handing him a tissue from her pocket. "Why don't we go back to where you live? Bayswater, right?"

Elias sniffled. "How do you know where I live? Did the Something Else tell you?"

That made Gertrude frown. "The what?"

"The watcher. The… the _watching thing_. The always watching thingy. The ceaseless watcher!" he shouted for no reason. "The ceaseless watcher," he whispered, so it wouldn't notice.

Instead of scolding him again, all she did was murmur, "Of course, the Beholding." She looked away, towards the ground.

"You know about it?" Elias asked while they left the park. "It likes to watch you. It's watching you right now," he added in a whisper.

"I know. It's how I knew where you live, and how I knew you were sitting under this tree. Elias," she said, clearly redirecting the conversation.

Elias was excited to find out where it was going. "Yes, Gertrude?"

"How long has the ceaseless watcher been watching you?"

"Hmm." Elias tried to remember. "A year or two ago? When I was a filing clerk." He could seriously murder a milkshake right now. With chips. Lots and lots of chips.

"Interesting." There was a strange glint in Gertrude's eyes. "Would you mind telling me more about that?"

"Well," Elias said, feeling a whole lot of words starting to bubble in his mind, more than he really should have been able to summon given his current state, "You know what I'm like now, Gertrude. At uni, I was even worse, if you can imagine that. Not even sure how I managed to get a degree, honestly. Back then I mostly got high for fun, and because uni is patently un-fun, I was high all the time.

"I applied for a position at the Magnus Archives because no place else would take me with my third-class degree. And I was really surprised when they agreed to hire me, because who on Earth would hire someone who gets high before work and wanders off to buy Twinkies and takes… how long has it been?"

"Twelve hours," she said flatly.

"Yes, and takes twelve hours to buy them? Nobody, that's who." He snapped his fingers. "But I started working here anyway, and that's when it started to watch me. The Something Else. And whenever I was sober, I could feel it watching me, and I hated it, I hated it _so much_ , Gertrude, so I, you know, adjusted my lifestyle.

"At first, I thought that being able to _see_ things was just from being constantly high. You probably don’t know what that’s like. Everything just made sense, like I could see the universe stretching out in front of me and I knew _everything_ that was happening. Then I realized that I really could see everything that was happening. I always see." He abruptly came to the end of the words and closed his mouth.

"Well, Elias, you just became vastly more intriguing." An uncharacteristic smile started to spread across Gertrude's face.

Elias had the feeling he wasn't going to like the reason why.


End file.
